NineFold Prison
by Sheaman
Summary: The Kyuubi was far too powerful to be sealed into a single child. Desperate, Konoha sacrifices nine of its children to hold the demon at bay. 12 years later, the Rookie 9 are about to graduate from the academy when an incident with the Forbidden scroll leads them to discover why they have been treated with fear and hate their entire lives...based on the premise from nobody102


At multiple times with the Naruto series, but particularly when writing Naruto fanfiction, there is one inescapable fact that arises:

Kishimoto couldn't be self-consistent to save his life.

As such, I've had to make some adjustments here or there in order for it to make sense. There are a couple of changes due to the fact that this is an AU. Additionally, I've also had to tweak a few ages here or there for the premise to work. Please bear with me.

Also, the children don't act like normal children. **This is intentional.**

I own Naruto. Just by opening this page, you deposited $25 into my bank account. This disclaimer is a legally binding statement. None of the previous statements are true.

Posted: 9/25/12

Last edited: 11/1/12

* * *

Deep in the forests of the Country of Fire, near Konohagakure, the Village Hidden in the Leaves, there was a clearing occupied by a perfectly strange tableau. One of the bijuu, the Tailed Beasts, as the strongest demons in the world were called, dominated the clearing. It was the Nine-Tailed Fox, the Kyuubi no Kitsune, the strongest of the Tailed Beasts, and its hatred was so great that the only woodland creatures left within kilometers were those whose hearts had burst under its baleful pressure. The majority of that hatred was focused on the two adults that were in the clearing with it: Uzumaki Kushina, a slender woman with red hair, the distinction of being the Kyuubi's previous host, and five faintly glowing chains erupting from her back of such length that they managed to both completely entrap the titanic bijuu and surround the clearing in a form of barrier jutsu, a kekkai ninjutsu; and Namikaze Minato, the Yondaime, Fourth Hokage and current leader of the Hidden Village of Konoha, a fairly tall blond man who even at that moment was trying to imprison the Tailed Beast within his newborn son, Naruto.

* * *

Sweat poured down the Yondaime's forehead as his chakra strained and buckled against an unyielding force. The leader of Konoha gave a final push, and then collapsed on the ground as the Kyuubi roared in triumph above him.

"Minato!" Kushina screamed. She started crawling towards him, only to curl into a ball when the gargantuan kitsune above her redoubled its efforts to escape her special chakra chains. "Minato," she groaned from her position on the ground. "Minato, are you alright?"

"It's no use Kushina," Minato panted. "Naruto doesn't have your special chakra. Without it, there's just no way he can even hope to contain the entire Kyuubi." He gritted his teeth. "Even if I was willing to handicap our son by sealing away the Kyuubi's Yin chakra, it's just too much power to safely seal inside of him."

"**Foolish meat sacks!**" the Kyuubi boomed, a grin wide enough to swallow the Hokage's tower splitting its face. "**I told you that you would not be able to keep me contained forever! It does not matter how many of you there are.**" It leaned in as far as it could, straining the chakra chains crisscrossing its form. "**Release me now, and I will extinguish your pitiful lives at once rather than properly repaying you for my decades of imprisonment. Delay, and you shall beg for death!**"

But despite knowing full well that a demon could not break its word once given, Minato had stopped listening. "It doesn't matter…how many of us there are?" the Yondaime whispered to himself. Then his head snapped up. "Kushina, hold onto it!" he shouted, then abruptly vanished with Naruto, with the Demon Lord's enraged bellowing filling the clearing.

* * *

There was no time to ask. If the circumstances were less dire, then he would have stopped and asked each family, allowed them time to give or withhold their consent. But the circumstances were _not_ less dire, and so after a brief stop at his office for the latest census report, the Fourth Hokage used his teleportation technique, Hiraishin, to arrive to the grounds of every clan with a member who had recently given birth, starting with the youngest and therefore the least-likely to reject the process.

The first stop was at the Yamanaka Clan Grounds. A few moments after his arrival, he appeared before the mother of less than a month. He bowed deeply before the surprised woman, cutting off her frantic questions. "I apologize," Namikaze said swiftly, "but as Hokage I require your child." Even as he spoke, he collected the small babe, with just the slightest tuft of blonde hair on her head, from her crib nearby. "All of Konoha will appreciate your sacrifice." With a flash, he disappeared back to the safe house where he had hidden Naruto, moments before a wail of horror filled the room.

This process was repeated with minor variations at the Nara, Uchiha, Inuzuka, Akimichi, and Aburame clan grounds, though Minato did have to move quite quickly to avoid Uchiha Itachi's desperate attempts to save his little brother from what he had to assume was mortal peril. At another time, the Hokage would have admired both the boy's speed and family loyalty, but as it was, he was only annoyed by the delay. Another, larger delay occurred when he went to the Hyuuga grounds to collect the baby there, a girl of nearly ten months of age. The Branch members guarding the fledgling heir were almost as upset at the idea of losing the babe as Itachi was, and they were just as violent. It was only by using his Hiraishin jutsu to take advantage of the rapidly-shifting blind spot of the all-seeing Byakugan that Minato was able to take her before too much time had passed.

However, it was at the Iwaki clan grounds that he found disaster. He teleported to the beacon that he knew he had left on the Iwaki grounds despite sensing that its position had moved considerably. When he arrived, he stared at the ruins of the once-proud grounds in shock, and then alarm as the implications sank in. As the demon-handlers of the Leaf Village, there had been innumerable seals covering the grounds, binding the tamed demons to the land. With the destruction of the property, not only did the Hokage have to find another child, but all of the previously-bound demons would be free to roam once more. Literally decades of progress in containing the local demon problem had been undone in an instant.

Pushing the future problem aside for the moment, Minato focused on the one at hand. The Hiraishin fuuin that he had built into Kushina's seal let him see just how much weaker she was becoming—there weren't any other clan children young enough and he didn't have time to try and find an infant specifically borne of non-clan ninja. Taking a civilian infant was a totally different proposition from taking a baby from ninja, but it was nothing next to the destruction of the village. Trying to conserve his rapidly dwindling supply of chakra, the Yondaime glanced at the census list once more and used Body Flicker to move quickly to nearby houses, hoping that one of the other infants living in the area would still be there.

At the second house he checked, he could feel a faint chakra source. A moment later, he found a baby inside her crib, the corpse of her father sprawled over the top, shielding her from the shrapnel flung about by the destruction of the Iwaki clan grounds. Taking only the briefest moment to lay the dead man to one side, the Fourth finally grabbed the last infant that he needed, a girl with faint pink fuzz all over her head, and teleported back to the safe house and the other eight infants.

* * *

Minato reappeared at his wife's side with a flash of yellow light. "Kushina!" he exclaimed, gently propping up her prone form. "Are you alright?" Privately, he couldn't believe that she had managed to maintain both the barrier and chains for this long.

"I'm fine…Minato," she said wheezily, blood trickling down her chin. "Did you do it?"

"Almost, love," he said, brushing some of her hair out of her face, before he locked eyes with the demon that was glaring its hatred on them. Minato's hands blurred together for a few moments, releasing a vast cloud of smoke, a physical manifestation of partially purposed chakra. When it cleared, his child was lying on the Ceremonial Throne, the other children surrounding him in an arc of four above him and four below, a replica of the Eight Trigrams Seal.

The Kyuubi's eyes widened as it saw the Hokage's plan at last. Desperate, it heaved against Kushina's Chakra Chains. Kushina stiffened and began convulsing as the faltering jutsu finally shattered, freeing the Tailed Beast and dropping the barrier surrounding the tableau. With a victorious snarl, the bijuu darted forwards, one gargantuan paw hurtling down to kill all of the humans in a single blow.

"Eight Trigrams Sealing!"

Even as the snarl withered, everything went white, then black.

* * *

Two bodyguards and an elderly shinobi named Sarutobi Hiruzin, also known as the Third Hokage, the God of Shinobi, and the Professor, stood as close to the chain-based kekkei jutsu as they could. "Can either of you see through the smoke?" Sarutobi asked, squinting his eyes. Even as they shook their heads, the chains framing the barrier jutsu suddenly shivered and shattered into pieces, collapsing at once. Taken by surprise, the three shinobi paused for a moment before leaping into action, only to run into an even larger plume of smoke and a piercing white light. Each of the ninja reflexively dodged, but no attack was forthcoming. When they proceeded forward, they saw the current Hokage and his wife, both lying on the ground. Next to them were nine infants, one on a throne that the Third dimly recognized from Kushina's sealing and the other eight arranged around him on the ground. One bodyguard began checking their surroundings, while the other went forward to examine the fallen.

"They're both dead," the other man said softly as he checked their vitals. Sarutobi closed his eyes for a moment as the weight of additional lives lost too soon fell upon him. The bodyguard moved onto the infants, checking them as best he could without knowing any medical ninjutsu. "The children seem to be fine…Hokage-sama," he said, addressing Sarutobi. Feeling the last of his hopes of resuming his retirement crumble to dust, the Sandaime merely nodded.

"But, Hokage-sama," the other man said, pausing a moment in his scans of the area. "I don't detect the Kyuubi anywhere. That means that the Yondaime had to have sealed it, doesn't it?"

"Yes, it does," the Sandaime said shortly. Without the rapidly dispersing cloud of chakra that was supposed to be released when a bijuu's current form was slain, the abrupt cessation of the oppressive feeling of malice that had been crushing the city should have been answer enough.

"But then…which one did he seal it into? Which one of these children is the new jinchuuriki?"

The Third Hokage stepped forward, running a gnarled finger over the spiral fuuinjutsu on the stomach of the blond, whiskered child on the ceremonial throne before letting his eyes wander of the identical Eight Trigrams Seals on each of the other children. Even as he saw them, the seals slowly began to fade from view.

"Isn't it obvious?" the Third asked wearily. "They all are."

* * *

It was less than a week after the Kyuubi no Kitsune attacked the Village Hidden in the Leaves, and Konoha had only begun to pull itself back together. Both the Inner and Outer walls were breached, great swathes of the village lay in ruins, and the residue of the bijuu's toxic chakra still lay thickly over certain parts of the city. With the utter destruction of the allied Village Hidden in the Whirlpool years ago and the disarray that the Iwaki clan was thrown into, cleaning up the residue promised to take a great deal of time.

However, all of that information was peripheral to certain members of the Aburame clan at present.

Currently, one of the few Aburame iryou-nin, or medic-nin, was examining one of the nine children that had the Kyuubi's power sealed inside. At least, that was what the Hokage had explained after the news of their existence had somehow leaked out. Despite his assurances that the Fourth Hokage had wanted them to be considered heroes for the role in keeping the King of Demons trapped, most of the populous firmly believed that the Nine-Tails had possessed those innocent babes. No matter how competent and self-sacrificing the Fourth had been, surely no mere babe could hold back the strength of a Demon Lord, even when split into nine pieces. Those who knew a little more about sealing pointed out that jinchuuriki becoming jinchuubai—that it wasn't unheard of for sealed demons to corrupt its host's mind without being able to escape their body –was a major reason that Konoha as a general rule did not seal demons into people. Even those who didn't believe it still wondered at where the blond, whiskered child had come from, and whispers abounded among the ignorant that the demon's power had been planted into those other infants until it was weak enough to be turned into a human. The Third Hokage, visibly disappointed at how the village was reacting to the unfortunately-leaked information, had made it a capital offense to discuss the matter with anyone who didn't know. Already, people had stopped openly speaking of it on the off-chance that the wrong person would overhear. Despite how much harder the common knowledge was sure to make their lives, the father of the child in question, one Aburame Shino, was currently glad that he didn't have to explain the situation to the doctor in question.

That could have been…awkward.

"I think I've determined the problem with the jin…with your son," the Aburame iryou-nin said, straightening his professional white suit even as he attempted to follow his training and look the parents in the eyes. Many others would have been off-put by seeing the patient's father in sunglasses and almost completely covered by a tan outfit with a collar high enough that it partially obscured the man's mustache, but this particular doctor was more than used to it.

"Please tell me what you have discovered. I will be listening," Aburame Shibi, the said father, said levelly.

"Well, you said that everything was fine at first, but that shortly afterwards the kikaichuu began dying off, leaving only a few alive in each life-cycle" the medic said, referring to the insects that were symbiotically linked to every Aburame at birth. The beetles nested inside of the Aburame's bodies and followed their orders in exchange for their chakra. "As you well know, the kikaichuu take over a great deal of our immune system's functions, so when they started to die off, his health naturally took a turn for the worse, though it did not seem to be as poorly as it should have, given the kikaichuu death rate. Regardless, you implanted it—him, implanted him, with another colony, hoping that the additional numbers would help the recovery, only for the new beetles to start dying off as well. Is all of this correct?"

"It is correct," Shibi confirmed, his voice flatter than usual. "Why is that? Because I did not engage in falsehoods when speaking with you."

"Right," the medic said, having had the typical Aburame speech patterns drilled out of him during his internship at the hospital. "Anyways, I think that I know your problem. From my scans, I've been able to determine that something must be wrong with the seal, because a very small amount of demonic chakra is present in…your son. It's not hurting him—in fact, it seems like that chakra is what's keeping his health as robust as it is without the kikaichuu bolstering his immune system—but it is killing most of the beetles, leaving only those with the most resistance to demonic toxicity alive to reproduce. With every life-cycle, more and more of the kikaichuu should be able to handle the toxic chakra."

"I see," Shibi said, considering. "So what is the prognosis?"

"I think he'll be fine long enough for you to go the Hokage to fix the seal," the doctor said, "though I strongly suggest you take care of that very quickly. In the meantime, he should be fine; the kikaichuu numbers should stabilize, though you could add a third colony if it takes too long to fix the issue."

"I'm glad that you helped my son to the best of your abilities," the jinchuuriki's father said after a moment. "Why? Because your actions have been competent and professional."

Nodding his acknowledgement, the doctor left immediately, and it was only a little while later that the worried parents took their child to the Hokage. It was with very mixed feelings that Shino's parents found out that supposedly, the seal was working just as intended.

* * *

A two year old blond boy with whiskers on his face sat curled up in the corner of a small storage room in the orphanage that he lived in. Uzumaki Naruto just couldn't understand why he wasn't allowed to play with the other kids. He could remember the younger ones playing with him a while ago, but the caretakers kept breaking up the games and putting them to work or punishing them if Naruto was playing with them. They never did that if Naruto wasn't playing, so it didn't take long for the other kids to exclude him from all of their games. Just as bad, the other kids didn't miss an opportunity to bump him over in the halls, knock his food tray out of his hands, or steal his stuff. Whenever Naruto would follow the rules and go to the caretakers instead of fighting back, he would just be told not to be so clumsy, not to waste food, or not to be so careless. And whenever Naruto lost his temper and actually fought _back_…Naruto shivered and clutched his bruised body. They usually faded within a week or so, but until then, they _hurt_. The only bright spot in his days were when Hokage-jiji would come visit him. It wasn't very often, at all, but he treasured every moment of them. And, of course, there were always his dream-friends. They showed up only rarely, but they seemed as lonely as he did, and they never beat him up. But that wasn't until nightfall. For now, as he sat in the corner, alone and in pain, the only thing he could think was, _Why?_

* * *

The pale, indigo-haired Hyuuga Hinata rolled over as she tried to sleep. It usually wasn't that hard for her to sleep, not since she found a bunch of friends to play with when she dreamt, but the day's events were much more upsetting than usual. There was some kind of festival going on in Konoha, but Hinata wasn't allowed to go, because it was birthday and she had duties at home. Then everyone had been focusing on her, which always made her nervous, and later her father had used that…_seal_…on Uncle Hizashi. She shuddered and rolled over once more, brushing her short hair out of her lavender, apparently pupil-less eyes. The killing intent that her uncle had focused on her was scary, of course, and it made her stomach feel funny for a moment, but it wasn't as scary as what her father did in response. Why did her father have hurt his brother just because he was in the branch family? It's not like he even seemed to like her. Nobody but her mother seemed to, really, and even she seemed distant sometimes. Troubled, the three year old heir to the Hyuuga family rolled over again and tried to sleep.

She was almost asleep when she felt it. The rolling wave of cloying…stickiness, except it was inside rather than outside. She hadn't felt that in well over a year. Hinata's eyes shot open for a moment before the Slumber Jutsu fully kicked in, and she slipped into a deep sleep.

A few moments later, Hinata's eyes popped back open, as they always did when someone used this technique on her. She didn't know why, but she seemed to be immune to that genjutsu that ninja parents often used to put overly-fussy children to sleep. Her caretakers had figured that out pretty quickly and had stopped bothering to use it. _So why—?_ Abruptly, as she mentally shook off the last cobwebs of her chakra-enforced slumber, Hinata became aware that she was being carried around her house, held tightly with one adult arm wrapped around her middle. She shifted and opened her mouth to ask a question, when the person holding her noticed that she was awake. The masked man spat a silent curse, tossed her up—Hinata let out a squeak of startlement—and then his fingers sparked as he touched her. Even as Hinata lost control of the breath she had been holding, her entire body went numb, and then the sticky wave crashed over her once more, much faster this time.

Its speed was irrelevant. Only seconds later, Hinata woke up, completely numb, only feeling that funny feeling in her stomach, which was only growing with her fear, letting out an involuntary whimper—_Where are my cousins?_—when the adult's hand swung down and smothered her face.

"_Quiet_," a deep voice growled at her. It said more, but Hinata didn't hear it, she couldn't, she couldn't breathe, she couldn't see, she couldn't _breathe, _she_ couldn't_ _see_! The funny feeling burned through her, and suddenly she could see everything, see through the hand over her face, through his body, through the walls on either side of the hallway she was being carried through, even a little into the rooms on either side, in every direction, as clear as day. _Did I activate my bloodline limit? _The man carrying her must have felt something, because he swore again, audibly this time, and sped up considerably, the flow of his chakra within his body quickening. A meter from the exterior door—what were those glowing spots? Or the delicate lines connecting them, beautiful except where they were warped around the door?—the man let his control of his emotions slip for a moment and Hinata felt his murderous intent, both familiar from earlier in the day and different, much stronger and more vicious.

Hinata had only thought that the funny feeling had burned before. _Now_ it burned, the feeling raging inside of her, as she felt her mouth draw back into a rictus and a nearly tangible wave of bloodlust exploded out of her in every direction, the sensation slamming into her kidnapper just as he ran out of the door leading to the grounds. He stumbled in shock, fumbling with her for a moment, before he recovered his footing. Which was the perfect footing to be caught completely off-guard by Hyuuga Hiashi. The head of the Hyuuga clan knocked the unsuspecting shinobi out with two carefully placed Jyuuken strikes, then caught Hinata before she hit the ground.

"Are you alright, Daughter?" Hinata heard from a distance. It was hard to focus on anything except the fallen kidnapper. Her new sight peered through his chest to find his heart still beating and her face only grew tauter, limbs twitching impotently. "Daughter? Daughter!"

When a hand touched her cheek, Hinata's eyes snapped over to the source of the contact before she realized that moving her eyes created only a negligible difference in what she actually saw. When she realized this, she focused and her new sight just _shifted_ to where she wanted it, showing her father kneeling over her. She had already seen it, she realized. It was more of a case of noticing what she had already—

"Daughter, I do not appreciate being ignored," her father said sternly. Hinata's thought process screeched to a halt, and her bloodlust flickered and died. He seemed to relax almost imperceptibly. "Daughter, are you alright?" Hinata still couldn't move so she just settled for blinking, something that had even less of an effect on her eyesight than moving her eyes. Her father laid a hand on her shoulder. "Be at ease, Daughter. It has been taken care of. Be calm." It was not a suggestion. Hinata tried to relax, and after a moment both the funny feeling and her new sight disappeared completely. This time her father almost certainly did relax, though Hinata was suddenly too tired to really notice.

Far too late, Branch Members burst into the courtyard, ready to face whatever had invaded the compound. Their shock and horror was palpable at how far a kidnapper had come, not to mention at the fact that the unconscious kidnapper was a high-ranking member of the visiting delegation from Kumogakure, the Village Hidden in the Clouds. Even as the courtyard broiled with activity, Hinata found herself finally drifting off into an exhausted sleep, the worried words "Red Byakugan" not even registering in her tired mind.

* * *

At roughly the same time, eight other children woke up abruptly. They looked around, unsure of what woke them, before most of them let the fatigue of the festival day pull them back under the soft covers of unconsciousness.

* * *

As Akimichi Chouji paused his inhalation of the breakfast in front of him, he gave a small sigh of equal parts happiness and sadness. The chubby brunet had had the best dream last night, where he had a bunch of friends who were always nice, and he wasn't excluded from their games. He'd been having those kinds of dreams for as long as he could remember, but they became much more frequent in the last year or two—_One year, seven months, and eleven days_, he determined after he thought about it for a few moments—and he thought that he was really getting to know his imaginary friends. And anyways, they were much nicer than the real kids that he knew.

"What a good boy," his mother said, smiling a trifle uneasily at him. She often seemed at least a little uncomfortable around him, though he couldn't figure out why. "Look at how big he's grown already, and only at the age of four," she continued, reaching out to ruffle his naturally-spiky hair for a moment, before pulling her hand back quickly.

"He's growing up to be big and strong, just like his old man," his father said gruffly, reaching over from his breakfast to thump Chouji on the back, though he also withdrew his hand rather swiftly.

"Thanks Mom, Dad," Chouji said, the red spirals that were his individual version of the Akimichi cheek-tattoo shifting as he tried to smile through the hurt. He couldn't understand why they were always so tentative around him; they didn't act like that around other people. He just sighed and went back to eating his breakfast.

He was still thinking about it when he left the clan grounds and headed for the neighborhood just outside the Clan section of the residential sector in Inner Konoha. His father had told him that it was a sort of unofficial Akimichi tradition, to try to forge friendships outside of those in the clans, with whom there would already be a good deal of inevitable interaction. Chouji was all for having more friends, but he sometimes wondered why his father seemed to hesitate introducing him to the other children of the Ino-Shika-Cho trio; their families had been bound together for decades, after all, and they were his dad's best friends.

When Chouji found the group of neighborhood kids at their usual spot, they were just picking teams for playing ninja. Smiling hopefully, he hurried forward to join the dwindling group of children who had not yet been chosen, pretending not to notice as a space opened up around him almost immediately. His smile slowly shrank as every other child was chosen, but even when it was obvious he was the last one, it was still hanging on. Until, at least, the other kids merely turned around and walked away without a word.

"Wait!" Chouji said, pain lancing his insides. "What about me?" Most of the other children didn't even look back. One boy stopped for a moment, turning to face the crushed Akimichi.

"Look, just leave us alone," the boy said impatiently. "We never let you play, so just stop bugging us!" Without waiting for a response, he spun around and joined the other kids, as they moved somewhere far from one of the children that their parents all told them to avoid.

Chouji's face crumpled as tears started flowing down his face. He stumbled out of the middle of the street where the kids had gathered and, leaning against the wall, slid down until he could wrap his arms around his legs. _Why do the other kids always have to be so mean to me? Just because I'm big-boned?_

Chouji had no idea how long he had been sitting there crying, his thoughts going around in circles, before someone spoke up right next to him.

"Meh, don't worry about them," a boy's voice said, making Chouji jerk back in shock, trying to rub the tears out of his eyes. The voice seemed so familiar…"You don't want to play with them anyways, it's far too much of a pain."

Chouji finally cleared his eyes as the voice clicked. "Shikamaru?" he asked wonderingly. "But…I thought you were…"

"Yeah," Nara Shikamaru said, the slight boy's spiky black ponytail scrunched up against the wall as he stared up at the sky. "I thought you were a dream, too. Guess not."

"But…this is great!" Chouji bubbled. "If you're real, then we can play games in real life—then everyone else is probably real too!"

"Yeah, probably," Shikamaru said, yawning widely enough that his brown eyes were momentarily forced closed.

"But…don't you want to go find them?" Chouji asked, somewhat taken aback.

"Eh, yeah, but later," Shikamaru said. "It seems too troublesome to track everyone down now. Besides, I found you," he said, standing up and brushing his clothes off, "and that's enough for me." he finished, making a best friend for life.

Chouji scrambled to get up too. "Where're you going?" he asked eagerly.

"I was gonna go to my favorite cloud-watching spot," the lazy boy said laconically. "Wanna come?"

"Yeah!" Chouji said, grinning fit to split his face in two. He quickly patted down his pockets as Shikamaru started to walk away. "Hey," he said after finding what he was looking for, "want a bag of potato chips?"

"Sure," Shikamaru said, returning Chouji's beaming smile with a small grin of his own. "I'd love one."

* * *

"Come along, Sakura," a middle-aged woman in plain but functional clothing said. She had blue eyes, pink hair, and a no-nonsense expression on her face as she looked expectantly down at her daughter.

Haruno Sakura froze in place. Slowly, the young girl looked up from the children's book she was reading, locking eyes with her mother. Sakura was a green-eyed girl that had hair one shade of pink darker than her mom. She was about average size for her four years of age, but had the most massive forehead relative to her size that she had ever seen, a fact that gave her no end of grief. The other children either teased her over it or ignored her, and adults all seemed to coldly ignore her when they weren't treating her worse. She didn't know why having a large forehead was such a bad thing, but the other people in the village obviously thought so. Despite sometimes having enough energy at times that she was practically bouncing off the walls, this led to her greatly preferring to stay indoors rather than go outside to expose herself to the ridicule of the others. So when she mom said something like that…

"Mom…" Sakura said slowly. "Come where?"

"Errands," she said shortly. "I need to take care of some errands, and you're coming with me."

"Mom, no!" she said loudly. "You know how the people treat me!"

"I don't see them treat you any worse than you deserve," the Haruno matron said waspishly. "Now come along and behave or I'll see how hard I have to paddle you to really keep you from sitting down for a week."

Sakura opened her mouth, then closed it without saying anything. She got up, changed her clothing, and then followed her mother out of the small apartment above the store that they owned.

Sakura tried to stay close to her mother the entire time, but it just wasn't possible for her to get close enough to her mom that some of the other villagers wouldn't glare at her.

Every store they went into, Sakura ran into the back the second she made it through the door. There was less chance of people seeing her when she was out of the way, she got fewer hateful glares, and she stayed out of her mother's hair. Everybody won. The first store this happened in, her mother opened her mouth to call her back to her side, before shrugging and returning to her shopping. As long as she returned swiftly when the Haruno mother was ready to leave, it didn't matter to her. She didn't as much as twitch when the pattern repeated in the other stores they visited.

Sakura was still fairly stressed when they started getting to the last couple of stores they needed to visit that day. She hadn't gotten anything worse than normal, but even that was quite unpleasant when compared to the solitude of her room. As they walked into the next store, she barely noticed that the name of the shop was Yamanaka Flowers.

Following her own pattern, Sakura immediately ran into the back. The rosette was looking around to make sure she was alone when she heard something unexpected. Curious, Sakura looked for the source of the sound for a few minutes before she found what was making the odd noises. The source of the noise was a girl around her age, with short blonde hair and blue-green eyes, and she was curled up in the back of the store, wedged between the seed trays for Ilex Crenata and Camellia Spiralis Rubra.

"Hey, are you okay back there?" Sakura asked. _It's hard to tell with her curled up back there, but she looks familiar…No, my mind's just playing tricks on me. Of course I would think that I see Yamanaka Ino in a store called Yamanaka Flowers._

The girl jerked and scrubbed her face frantically for a moment before she stood up. "Yeah, I'm fine," she lied stubbornly, keeping her eyes from the young girl that appeared out of nowhere. "I just…got dust in my eyes, that's—" Just as she slipped out between the trays, she glanced at the person who found her, and she stopped dead. "…Sakura-chan?"

Sakura started in surprise. "Ino-chan?" she asked, recognition clicking.

"You—you're real?" Ino said incredulously. "I thought…"

"I thought you were an imaginary friend," Sakura said wonderingly. "I can't believe…"

As their surprise turned to delight, the two girls put their heads together and discussed their newfound existence, completely missing the horrified looks on their parents' faces at the sight of the two of them meeting.

* * *

It was the third day of October, precisely a week before the fourth annual Festival to commemorate the tragic loss of the Yondaime Hokage, lost in the battle to defeat the dreaded Kyuubi no Kitsune, and Uzumaki Naruto was enjoying one of the last days of freedom before he had to hole up for a while. For some reason, the closer it got to his birthday, the harsher all of the villagers were towards him. It got bad enough that he tended to go find some secluded corner to hide in a few days beforehand so he wouldn't have to worry about being punished for staining the drab orphanage clothes with the rotten garbage the villagers pelted him with. It was a pretty crumby way to spend his birthday. Naruto hoped that old man Hokage would approve of letting him rent his own apartment soon; it'd be nice to have a place to hide without worrying about someone getting angry at him for being on their property. Naruto was just circling around the inside of the town when he saw a couple of Hyuuga dressed in their traditional pale robes coming. He grimaced and made to move to the other side of street—every Hyuuga he ever met was an S-ranked jerk. That didn't count Hinata, one of his dream-friends, of course, since she only lived in his dreams.

Just then, as Naruto started moving, he glimpsed a sight from between the two foremost Hyuuga that made him pause in place. _Could it be?_ Ignoring the potential danger, the blond boy pushed forward to confirm what he saw. Even when the Hyuuga clearly saw him heading towards them and one of them moved to intercept, still Naruto continued.

"Halt, Uzumaki," the intercepting Hyuuga stated flatly. When Naruto tried to slip past him, the adult's hand snapped out and grabbed his shoulder. He started to squeeze tightly, before his eyes flickered twice, upper left, upper right. With a carefully suppressed sigh, he settled for merely holding on tightly enough that the child couldn't slip away. "Halt," he repeated needlessly. "Where do you think you are going?"

Still Naruto ignored him, wriggling this way and that in order to see past the imposing figure. The second Hyuuga had also stopped in place, though his stance and the hand that he had thrown up behind him made it clear that he was blocking Naruto's view of something.

"Uzumaki!" the closer Hyuuga ground out, shaking the boy roughly.

Even as Naruto steadied himself, he spotted the elusive figure he had glimpsed before, peeking around the second Hyuuga. "Hinata-chan!"

Every adult Hyuuga present—not to mention more than one of the observing villagers—stiffened at this, and a small gasp was heard from behind the second Hyuuga.

"N-na-naruto-kun?" Hyuuga Hinata asked, clearly surprised as she peered past what were obviously her bodyguards.

Wasting no more time, the Hyuuga by Hinata quickly and firmly herded her back the way that they had come from and Naruto found his shoulder caught in a vise-grip that abruptly yanked him off of his feet away from someone that he had thought was only a dream.

"I'll see you later, Hinata-chan!" Naruto yelled cheerfully as he was dragged away, happy despite the increasing pain in his shoulder. Even before he was thrown into an alley, Naruto was already making plans to see if all of his other dream-friends were real, too. He was so preoccupied, he didn't even notice the slight itching sensation he felt in the direction that he was being dragged from.

* * *

Uchiha Sasuke walked with his parents at the Yondaime Commemorative Festival, behind and slightly to the side of his father, the head of both the Konoha Military Police Force and the Uchiha clan. The four year old wanted to walk closer to his parents to avoid the inexplicably wrathful glares from the other people at the festival, but he was afraid to get too close to his father, who was cold to him on the best of days. Torn between conflicting desires, Sasuke did what he always did when he was dragged to these kinds of things; he avoided eye-contact, tried to make himself as invisible as possible, and endlessly wondered if his lack of progress compared to his elder brother Itachi's genius was really so bad that everyone had to hate him so much.

The crowd swirled around, and suddenly the head of the Uchiha clan came face to face with the head of the Hyuuga clan. Polite smiles and calm words were brandied about, back and forth, as the two most powerful clans—and thus two of the most powerful political blocs in Konoha—engaged in a verbal duel. Sasuke's education was very thorough, so he knew just how important such political spars could be, but that was yet another way that Itachi completely surpassed him. Worse, it was one that he had virtually no chance or interest in improving, so as usual he ignored it completely.

Until, that is, his eye caught a flicker of movement that didn't match the normal movements of the crowd. His head snapped up as he saw a lavender eye under hair so dark black it appeared blue. Sasuke's mouth dropped open as he saw someone he thought was purely fictional.

"Hinata-chan?" Sasuke blurted out, unconsciously taking a few steps forward.

Hinata seemed even more nervous than she typically did when he dreamed her. "S-sa-sasuke-k-kun," she nodded with a shy smile. "It looks like N-naruto-kun isn't t-the only friend that I dr-dream of that's real," she said, boggling the dumbfounded Uchiha even further.

Sasuke opened his mouth—to say what, he had no idea—but suddenly the conversation he had been ignoring stopped. One of his father's heavy hands fell onto his shoulder, gripping his tunic and yanking him backwards even as a Hyuuga Branch member smoothly slid in front of Hinata.

Frostily polite pleasantries were exchanged between clan heads for only a moment longer before each child was hauled away by their respective father. Despite knowing he'd pay for it later, Sasuke simply couldn't focus on his father's lecture; his mind was trying to process this new information far too swiftly for that. The itch on the back of his neck didn't help matters, either.

* * *

Inuzuka Kiba, a remarkably feral-looking four year old brunet boy with dark, oval eyes and the large red fang cheek-tattoos of the Inuzuka clan, laughed out loud as he spun through an empty field, holding up his new dog in the air. As an Inuzuka, he was entitled to at least one canine, a dog that would become his life-partner, to live and fight and die alongside him. But Kiba had been hearing disquieting murmurs about how he might not actually get one, something that confused him to no end. What was even more confusing was how restrained the objections had been.

The Inuzuka, like the Hyuuga, were almost universally granted with senses that extended far beyond those of normal humans, which made maintaining personal privacy…problematic. Instead of eyes that could see through anything, Inuzuka could hear exceptionally well, and their sense of smell was rivaled only by those of their ninken, or ninja dog companions. However, the way that they dealt with this was very different from how the Hyuuga did. The Hyuuga seemed to pretend that they didn't see anything that they shouldn't, while the Inuzuka just accepted it and didn't bother trying to hide anything. What was the point in trying to hide something when anyone could dispel the lie with a single sniff?

The upshot was that it was very unusual for an Inuzuka to try to be subtle or hide their opinions, but that was exactly what had happened this time. Luckily, his mother had finally ruled that he could have a partner, and so today—officially the best day ever—he had gotten a small, white, mohawked puppy with brown markings on his nose, mouth, and ears. He had seen how dogs of that breed reacted to the Soldier Pills that the Inuzuka used in battle, turning completely red, so he decided to use that in the puppy's name, and called him Akamaru.

Akamaru's tongue licked out on his cheek, causing Kiba to laugh once more. He never laughed this much…when he was awake, anyways. The time that he spent with his friends while sleeping were the only times he really felt happy, or wanted. He'd probably laughed more in his sleep than he ever had awake. Though they had all been acting pretty weird lately, trying to convince him that they were around when he was awake, too. Kiba made a face. Probably just wishful thinking. Putting those thoughts behind him, he laughed and hoisted Akamaru into the air again, spinning through the fields with his new puppy's barking to accompany him.

"Kiba-kun!" Kiba froze. That voice sounded exactly like…no way, it wasn't possible, his mind was just fooling him. The Inuzuka shook his head and tried to play with Akamaru again, only to notice that the puppy was looking past him with a quizzical look on his face. Akamaru must have heard it too, so someone had to be there…he knew all of the Inuzuka, so if he didn't recognize the voice…

Kiba lowered Akamaru until he was hugging the small puppy, then slowly turned around to see—"Naruto-kun?" Kiba whispered, mouth gaping open in shock. This wasn't real. It wasn't possible. _Oh, duh._ "This is a dream," Kiba said, calming down once he figured it out. "I thought I could always tell when I was dreaming, but I must have been wrong, and this is a dream." He looked down from the rapidly approaching blond to his new companion. "I guess that means you're not real either, boy, huh?" he asked softly. Akamaru's ears drooped and he whined as he picked up on his new master's mood. "I guess…I guess it was too good to be true."

Naruto finally got close enough to hear what Kiba was saying. "What're you talking about?" Naruto asked, head tilted to the side. "What's too good to be true?"

"Akamaru. You. This," Kiba said, waving his hand around him vaguely. "I'm obviously dreaming again."

Naruto frowned. "You are not."

"Am too."

"Are not!"

"Am too!"

"Are—!" Naruto caught himself. He rubbed the back of his head, frustrated with the situation. "So you think that you're dreaming, even though you definitely are not?"

"No, I know that am too dreaming," Kiba retorted, turning away slightly as he hugged his imaginary dog closer.

"Oh, I see." Suspicious that Naruto would give up so easily—_He's the most stubborn person I know that's not in my clan_—Kiba turned back to look at Naruto, just in time to see a wide-open haymaker headed for his face. His family training kicking in, Kiba shifted Akamaru to one arm while he used the other to block the untrained blow. Still reacting on instinct, Kiba's foot lashed out, hesitating midway there as he realized what he was doing. Despite his indecision, Naruto's attempt to block him was completely unstable, knocking him on his rear.

Kiba took a few steps back hurriedly. "What the heck was that, Naruto!" Kiba shouted, a delayed burst of adrenaline raising his voice's volume noticeably.

"Ouch," Naruto muttered, absently rubbing his behind as he got up. "I was just trying to prove that you are not in a dream."

"And how is hitting me supposed to prove that?" Kiba snapped, hugging Akamaru harder. Even if he was just a dream, Naruto could have hurt him!

"Well, isn't pinching yourself supposed to wake you up when you're dreaming?" Naruto asked.

"I…I heard that before, but I've never tried it before," Kiba said. _Not when my dreams are usually so much better than being awake._

"Well, try it now," Naruto suggested. Kiba considered it for a minute, shrugged, then pinched himself.

"Ow."

"Anything?"

"Hm…nope," Kiba said, hope starting to grow inside him.

"Try again, harder, just to be sure," Naruto said, his expression perfectly innocent.

"Okay," Kiba said, then pinched himself again. "Ow!"

"Anything now?"

"No…"

"Harder?" Naruto asked, still the perfect image of innocence.

"Better make sure," Kiba agreed, using his oversized nails and twisting as he pinched himself again. "OW!" Kiba said, following it with a number of words that his mother would have washed his mouth out for saying, despite the fact that he learned them all from her. By the end of the tirade, Naruto couldn't control himself any longer and was rolling on the ground, laughing hard enough that he had to hold onto his ribs. He didn't even stop laughing when an irate Kiba bopped him on the head. "What's the big idea, Naruto?" Kiba snarled.

"Well," Naruto chuckled, "you don't think you're dreaming anymore, do you?"

Kiba stopped, realization hitting him all at once. "No, I don't," he said wonderingly. He looked down at Akamaru, hugging him close again. He wasn't a dream! None of his friends were dreams! _Wait,_ Kiba thought, frowning as a thought occurred to him. "Is everyone else real too?" he asked plaintively.

"You bet they are, dattebayo!" Naruto said cheerily, his grin so wide his eyes scrunched closed. "Shikamaru found Chouji, and Ino found Sakura, and then Chouji and Shikamaru found Ino, and I found Hinata, and she went out and found Sasuke, and then I tracked down Shino and finally I found you!" Naruto said, seemingly in a single breath. "I haven't seen Ino-Shika-Cho yet, and I only got a glimpse of Sasuke, but I met Sakura and Shino and of course you," Naruto beamed. "Here, let me tell you everything else you don't know yet. There's this weird itch after we meet each other, you'll see after I leave, it seems to show us where we all are, it's so cool, oh, oh, and then there's…"

Kiba had thought that it was the best day ever before. He was wrong. _Now_, it was the best day ever. Too excited to sit down, Kiba ran around with Naruto while he told him everything about the amazing new world he suddenly found himself in.

* * *

Shikamaru heaved a heavy sigh. This whole thing was far too much of a pain to be expressed in words.

The nearly-five year old had just been sitting on his favorite hill on the Nara clan grounds, trying to calm his restlessness by just watching the clouds float by, when his mom had stormed up and yelled at him to get back to the house because he had to practice the clan's ninja techniques. He'd made the mistake of asking why he had to practice when he wasn't even going to be enrolled in the Ninja Academy for more than another year, and had been treated to a lecture full of information he already knew. Yes, he knew that clan children had to make a better showing than civilian students, or even the children of non-clan ninja. Yes, he understood that he had to practice his clan jutsu a great deal, in order to make sure that when he needed to use it, he'd be so used to it that he'd be able to reduce the number of hand seals required down to one or two, an action necessary for any clan that wanted to keep their hidden techniques actually hidden in a village full of jutsu-stealing Uchiha. No, he didn't want to make his mom sad by dying on a mission because he was too lazy to practice what he needed to stay alive. Personally, Shikamaru thought that the only reason she'd be sad if he died was because she would miss bossing him around, but he was smart enough not to say that out loud again. His bruises may have disappeared a while ago, but his memory was crystal clear.

So with only a few more complaints than normal, Shikamaru had let himself be ordered into his family's dojo to practice under his dad's direction. Except then he had to stand around for the ten minutes it took his mom to hunt down his dad and chivvy him into actually teaching him. Shikamaru made sure to hide his rolling eyes and frequent sighs. He could only push her so far, after all.

And _then_, after all that fuss, he had only a few minutes to practice with his dad before he got called away on a sudden Council meeting. His mom had stopped Shikamaru from leaving, of course, and told him that he could practice well enough until his dad had returned, perhaps focusing on improving his control over the jutsu. Grumbling to himself once more, the spiky-haired brunet had turned around and marched back into the dojo and instead of sparring with his dad or learning new kata, he practiced the jutsu that put his family on the map.

Shikamaru got into place, and then noticed that the dojo door hadn't closed properly behind him. Even as he looked at it, he could feel a breeze flow through the open space. He stared at it for a moment longer before shrugging. _Too troublesome._ Not giving it any more thought, he began to practice the first of his clan's hidden jutsu.

It was pretty interesting, actually. The Kagemane Jutsu, or Shadow Possession Technique, took the user's shadow and stretched it out into whatever shape the user wanted. Furthermore, when their shadow touched another person's shadow, they could not only freeze them in place, they could force them to imitate the user's movements. It was not a single technique as it appeared. Instead, it was actually three different jutsu all strung together, which was part of why the Nara needed to start so early. The first let them to contort their shadows into shapes limited only by their creativity and chakra control. The second allowed them to link their shadow with their target's shadow, something that could also be used to lock onto innocuous shadows and piggy-back towards their real target. The third was the one that made them famous, and that was what forced their target to move as the user moved. It worked in reverse as well, of course, but there was a large strength-multiplier in the Nara's favor that kept it from being used against them very often. Shikamaru was quite solid on the first and third parts, but he kept running into trouble actually getting his shadow to link to the target. Unfortunately, that was also a part that he needed a partner to practice on.

Several hours later, Shikamaru was exercising his chakra control by working on the first part of Kagemane, manipulating his shadow into all sorts of shapes, when he heard his dad's voice once more. He didn't think anything of it when he heard his dad say 'Ino,' but hearing the name 'Shino' in the same breath sent a shiver down his spine. Without a thought, he snuck towards the dojo's door, noting absently at his shadow retracted to its normal shape as he moved.

Even listening as hard as he could, he only caught snatches of what his dad was saying. He pushed the door open further and slowly inched into the hallway.

"…and we tried to convince them that they're overreacting, and they are, the gutless fools—" Shikamaru started. He never heard his dad talking like that. "—but they also have a point. How _have_ they all found one-another? Some apparently were accidents—Haruno-san by all appearances had to practically drag Sakura with her when she went to Yamanaka Flowers, not the other way around, and Hinata and Sasuke apparently only met because they were accompanying their fathers at the Yondaime Commemorative Festival, though I haven't the faintest idea of what those two were thinking at the time—but Ino started pestering Inoichi about meeting Chouji and our son almost immediately after meeting Sakura, and the ANBU following Naruto—" Shikamaru's normally apathetic eyes widened into marbles. _Why are covert-operation agents following Naruto? _"—said that he was very obviously searching for Shino and Kiba."

He missed what his mom's response was, making Shikamaru inch a bit further out of the dojo and strain his ears.

"That's the baffling part," his dad said. "Both the Aburame and Inuzuka are too good at sensing for them to get very close quickly, but in both cases, in _every_ case, all of the Nine seem to form instant friendships. Even odder, they seem to know a lot about one-another, more than they could possibly have discussed in the snatches of conversation that the ANBU miss. They've caught bits and pieces that may point in the right direction, something about dreams, and imagination, and whether or not something's really real. It just doesn't make sense." There were a few moments of silence, during which Shikamaru waffled over whether he should inch closer or return to the dojo. "Anyways, Yoshino," his dad addressed his mom with forced cheer, "how has our son's practice gone in my absence?"

Return to the dojo it was. But as he hurriedly made it appear he had never stopped practicing, or at least had only stopped to daydream, and even as he started creating strategies for how they would deal with the fact that they were being regularly eavesdropped on—only talking about sensitive information in their dreams, of course, but when they have to speak about it outside, perhaps a hand sign language, different from one ones taught by the Academy, maybe with a randomized verbal component overlaid to throw off the listeners—he couldn't stop pondering: just who was it that was so worried about the nine of them finding one another?

* * *

"So…I've been thinking," Naruto began.

"Did it hurt?" Sasuke said innocently.

"Not as much as my fist will hurt your face," the four year old blond mock-growled back, shaking a fist threateningly. Sasuke merely waved for him to continue, unable to keep a small smirk from his face. "Anyways," Naruto said, the small grin on his face disappearing after a moment, "I was thinking about entering the Ninja Academy session that's starting in a few weeks."

"But that's a whole year early!" Sasuke blurted in surprise, his amusement evaporating. "Two sessions before the rest of us are going to join."

"Exactly," Naruto nodded.

Since Sasuke was obviously taken by surprise, Naruto gave him a moment and took a look around while the Uchiha gathered his thoughts. They were currently in one of their dreams, and had been playing with the others before Naruto had grabbed Sasuke's arm and dragged him off to talk, automatically heading away from _that place_. Only a few steps away from the forest glen that they had been playing in, they suddenly appeared in what looked like one of the smaller side streets not too far outside of the clan sector of Konoha, where they normally hung out in reality.

Sasuke's father, Fugaku, had reportedly been furious at first at the idea of Sasuke wanting to hang out with the orphan outcast that was Naruto. However, half-way through his rant, he had apparently trailed off mid-sentence. Before Sasuke had asked his father what was wrong, Fugaku had abruptly said that it was fine, just not to spend too much time with him. Sasuke had glossed it over, but Naruto was sure that Sasuke had just agreed and run off before the clan patriarch could change his mind.

Meanwhile, Sasuke had finally regrouped his thoughts. "Why would you want to go to the Academy a year ahead of us? Don't you want to get on a team with the rest of us?"

"Of course I do!" Naruto said, offended at the idea.

"Then why are you joining in early?" Sasuke asked.

"To fail, of course!" Naruto said, rubbing his chin and making a ridiculous face that he thought made him look smart, despite Sasuke and just about everyone else telling him it made him look like an idiot.

"So…you want to join early…to fail?" Sasuke asked dubiously.

"Yup!" Naruto said.

"Okay…I could see how you'd still be able to join us if you managed it correctly, but…why?" Sasuke asked.

"Scouting!" Naruto exclaimed. After a moment, Naruto could see the connections click into place in Sasuke's head.

The Academy actually was a pretty difficult school to get through. Not only did they have to learn everything that was taught at normal schools, though some subjects were taught to a somewhat lesser degree, but they had several classes that were far more in-depth or flat-out didn't exist in civilian schools. Classes like introductory chakra manipulation and physiology were barely touched on in civilian schools, just enough to teach the children how to charge the various chakra storage posts around the village or do some preliminary first-aid on a bystander if any of the conflicts between ninja spilled over into everyday life. Classes like tactics or weapons handling classes were never even a possibility in the schools designed to help Konoha's thriving middle class prosper. As such, it actually made sense for Naruto to enter early and then not try to succeed very hard. It meant that by the time that the rest of the Nine, as they had noticed that others were calling them, joined the Academy, they would already have a preview of what was to come. Then they could study well in advance, and practice the trickier subjects that caused a lot of the other students trouble. It…was fairly brilliant, actually.

"But why?" Sasuke asked, his confusion obviously only somewhat abated. "I get how useful that will be for the rest of us, but you'd be losing a lot of time with the rest of us. Time when nobody could object to us hanging out as much as we want, at least during school hours."

"I wouldn't be missing as much time as you'd think," Naruto pointed out, both bouncing in place and looking conflicted simultaneously. "I obviously would have to hide my awesomeness for a while, so that they don't get suspicious when I suddenly start not being so awesome. Instead, I would have to only slowly show pieces of my greatness. So I'd be held back in this class, then that, so at least some of the classes would still be with you guys."

"After which you would no longer be able to help us in those classes," Sasuke pointed out, "since you'd be taking the next step with us for the first time, after you drop back to our level."

Naruto held up his palms and moved them up and down like a scale. "It's a balancing act, yeah, but me and my amazingness will handle it, dattebayo!"

Sasuke shook his head, putting the issue of Naruto's verbal tics aside for the moment. "But _why_?" Sasuke insisted.

Naruto's expression quivered for a moment, before he spun to stare intently at the suddenly-fascinating cloud patterns above them. "Because I want to be able to really _contribute_ something," Naruto said, voice wavering for a moment at the end.

Sasuke cocked his head. "What do you mean?"

"I mean—!" Naruto started, then stopped for a moment before spinning back around to face Sasuke. "Look, I know that my awesomeness must be difficult to handle, and you're going to have to learn to deal with your jealousy of my skills by the time I'm Hokage—"

"I'll try," Sasuke interjected dryly. As if Naruto didn't know that Sasuke could just copy whatever "awesomeness" Naruto possessed with his family's kekkei genkai, the Sharingan, after it awakened. If it awakened.

"—but the fact is," Naruto continued, "I don't really have anything to contribute to the group, not in the Academy itself. All of the rest of you have your clan stuff—yeah, yeah, I know," Naruto said, holding up one hand impatiently when it looked like Sasuke was going to interrupt, "we all agreed that you guys can't share the REALLY secret stuff, because then you'd stop being taught it or whatever, but that doesn't stop Kiba from teaching us tracking tricks, or Ino from teaching us info-gathering techniques, or Shikamaru from teaching us strategy, at least if we can convince him to get off his butt long enough to do it. And no, Sakura doesn't have a clan full of barely-secret techniques that she could share, but she does have her scarily-smart brain to help us handle all of those classes. All I have is my sheer marvelousness, and sadly I can't pass that along to the rest of you."

Sasuke kept from rolling his eyes. Barely. "You do realize that you're going to look like a dead-last who can't pass the class and the rest of us are going to look even better because we'll be able to work on this stuff ahead of time, right? Are you going to be able to handle that?"

"Heck yeah, dattebayo!" Naruto exclaimed. "I've got the perfect cover for that." He looked around, despite the fact that in their dreams the ANBU that were apparently following him—and what a kick to the head _that_ was; he hadn't realized that the old man had recognized his awesomeness so clearly already—wouldn't be able to hear anything he said, and then leaned in as he whispered, "Any time I think I won't be able to handle keeping a lid on my amazing abilities, I'll just brag about them. I'll be telling the truth, but they'll think I just have a big head or something." Naruto straightened up and beamed, stretching to put his hands behind his head. "Genius plan, ne?"

Sasuke did roll his eyes, this time. "Yes, Naruto, genius."

Naruto chuckled. "I knew it!"

"Just one problem," Sasuke said.

"Oh? What's that?"

"How're you going to get into the Academy a whole year early? That war with Kumo was resolved almost two years ago, you don't have a bloodline limit that requires additional training, and despite your, er, 'amazing abilities,' you're not a prodigy with a sponsor. Is there another way of getting in early that I don't know of?"

"Sure is, dattebayo!" Naruto grinned.

"…which is?" Sasuke prompted after a moment.

"To get Hokage-jiji to personally okay it!" Naruto said, grin stretching from ear to ear.

"I will never get over how disrespectfully you refer to the leader of the entire ninja force in the Country of Fire," Sasuke said, shaking his head in disbelief. "To keep calling him 'old man'…"

"What? He is old!" Naruto defended. "Besides, he really likes it. I can tell."

"Right…"

"He does!"

"Putting that aside for the moment, you hate asking for charity!"

"Not more than I hate feeling useless. Anyway, I have an appointment with him later today to discuss this."

"By which you mean you're going to sneak into his office again?" Sasuke smirked.

"Hey, what else am I supposed to do when the doormen to the Hokage Tower won't let me past and keep 'losing' my appointment requests?"

Sasuke just sighed and slugged Naruto's shoulder as he walked back towards the rest of the Nine, a small smirk on his face. "Just try not to end up in the hospital again."

"Come on Sasuke, the Tower hasn't shocked me since that second time, and that time wasn't even bad. Jeez, get hospitalized once and certain people never shut up about it," Naruto mock-whined back as he ran past the Uchiha, laughing as he went.

* * *

Inoichi watched with some pride as his daughter performed the first of the Yamanaka clan's signature jutsu, the Mind Body Switch technique, on one of her cousins. She did little more than walk around while possessing the girl, but it was sufficient to show that her control had been established. At a little over five years of age, she was a bit old to still be having difficulty with the jutsu, but her trouble actually using the technique was generally balanced out by the fact that when it worked, she seemed to almost be a natural at it. Not once did she fail to overcome her target, though none of them had thus far been consciously using any of the clan's special mental defenses, and she seemed to snap back to her body after releasing or missing faster than she should have been able to. Far faster. Inoichi shivered for a moment.

He'd had more than a few reservations about teaching her the jutsu at all. He loved his daughter, he really did, but at first he had been far too worried to even consider teaching her the jutsu. She was a container of the Nine-Tailed Fox; what if the act of leaving her body was enough to open it up to the Fox's control? What if once the Fox got out, returning to her own body wasn't enough to put it back down? What if it took the opportunity to consume her mind? A Yamanaka ninja without their mental jutsu was hardly a Yamanaka at all, but he couldn't take the chance.

It took his wife going to the Hokage behind his back to change his mind. He'd been ordered into the Hokage's office for a private meeting, which consisted of only a little chiding—clan business was clan business, after all, and even the Hokage couldn't meddle too much with that—but a great deal of explanation. Hokage-sama had shown him a replica of their seals, updated frequently during the "physicals" that the Nine underwent. He traced for Inoichi the parts of the seal that had to do with keeping the Bijuu's personality separate from the children's, and all of the limitations impressed upon the trapped demon. He gave him his own testimony as a fuuinjutsu expert, and those of his even more talented student, Jiraiya of the Sannin, that teaching Ino the Mind Body Switch technique, or Shintenshin no Jutsu, would not release the demon again. In the end, to convince Inoichi not to handicap his daughter, the Hokage had proposed a compromise.

Inoichi would bring young Ino to one of the ANBU training grounds, where the Hokage would place a small, temporary suicide switch seal on the back of her neck. She would then practice Shintenshin until she managed it correctly. If by the faintest chance the Kyuubi did try to take over, Ino would return to her body. If the Kyuubi was not repressed by that action, there were all sorts of anti-demonic chakra seals at their disposal to help the process along. If all that failed to subdue the Demon Lord, then one of the Hokage's most trusted ANBU would activate the suicide switch. Inoichi certainly didn't like the situation, but it was a lot better off using the government's resources than just sticking with his own.

In the end, it had all worked out. They had taken Ino in, told her that if she wanted to be a ninja then she had to learn how to keep secrets like this one, and then applied the suicide switch seal. She had practiced on a volunteer from ANBU, while another ANBU—his Sharingan eyes peeking out of the stylized Crow on his white mask—hid out of Ino's sight, ready to trigger the last-ditch defense if needed. Though it took her nearly the entire first day to get the jutsu right, by the end of the second day she was able to reproduce it several times, though not with a great deal of reliability. Not once was there even the slightest hint that something was wrong, despite the Sensor-types in the room and, Inoichi was sure, the focus of Konoha's Village Sensory Department. So, reassured, Inoichi swore Ino to secrecy once more, made her promise not to use the jutsu on anyone outside of practice before she became a genin or it was an emergency, and took her home to practice in more familiar circumstances.

Since then, her progress in how often she got the jutsu to actually work was less than spectacular, but she never had the smallest bit of trouble suppressing her target's will and always snapped back to her own body so fast that it honestly scared Inoichi for what it could imply. _Now if only she could improve her success rate in actually casting the technique…_

"Alright Ino," he called out, "that's enough of that for today. I've got something new to teach you." Ino released the body of the girl she was currently possessing and, barely waiting to wave goodbye to her, bounded over to her dad, eyes wide and eager to learn. Despite his myriad misgivings about her whole situation, his heart couldn't help but swell for a moment as he saw how cute she was. Though, if she stayed this cute as she got older, as a Yamanaka she would have to undergo training for some of the more unsavory aspects of infiltration. Keeping his disgust at the idea of his little girl training in that from his expression, he settled down and explained what he would be teaching her next.

"Alright Ino, it's time to start working on your mental defenses," Inoichi led in to the subject. It was a complex and important ability, to defend one's mind from other intruders. This was some of the most secretive information of the entire list of Yamanaka clan techniques, since it would make all of their jutsu much less effective if it ever became common knowledge.

"…and that about sums up the beginner's introduction to Yamanaka mental defenses," Inoichi said several minutes later, after teaching what could be immediately put into effect. "Now, you go sit where your cousin was, and I'll sit where you were, and I'll practice on you, just to let you see how it feels. Then later you can work on your defenses and we can try it again, okay?"

"Okay Daddy!" Ino chirped cheerfully. She skipped over to the other seat and tried to ready herself for being possessed. Inoichi sat down so that when his consciousness left his body it wouldn't get hurt, and tried to give his daughter a reassuring smile. He ran through the full set of hand signs for her benefit, then entered her mind.

* * *

Inoichi Yamanaka looked around in utter confusion. _Why…why would Ino's mindscape look like a sewer?_ Scratching his head, Inoichi started walking forward into the shadows before a sudden bad feeling struck him. _What…?_ The instant he stopped, a bloodcurdling wave of killing intent slammed into him like an Akimichi. _I haven't felt this since…_Without a thought, Inoichi flung himself backwards, just as several claws—each one several times larger than he was—stabbed forward out of the darkness ahead of him. Practically gibbering with fear, he fled before he had a chance to notice the bars between the man and the paw connected to those claws.

* * *

Inoichi found himself sitting in the chair, his heart beating fast enough that he would probably have to visit the medic-nin. _What? What? What was—?_

"That was kind of weird, Daddy." Inoichi nearly leapt out of his chair, having forgotten he wasn't alone. "I'm not sure how it felt. I didn't even notice my blacking out. Could you try it again, just to be sure?" Ino continued, looking innocent. Too innocent.

"Uh, no Ino, you did really well. I actually couldn't get through at all," Inoichi said weakly, trying to cover up his distress.

"Really?" Ino gasped, her eyes going wide again. "But it was my first time!"

"Yes, it was," her father said, a sickly smile on his face. "It just goes to show, you have great natural resistance to mental attacks. Would you do Daddy a favor and tell Mommy to come see me, and then go play for the rest of the day, alright?"

"Okay Daddy!" Ino said, running up to give him a big hug first. Inoichi wasn't sure how well he had managed to cover up his flinch. He quickly stopped thinking about that, however, after Ino left the room. _How…how did I see the Kyuubi inside her head, instead of inside its seal?_

* * *

I decided to cut it in half, because this part, at more than 12.5k words, is already above my general stopping point. The second half is almost completed, baring a few keys scenes.

Jinchuubai: Unsuccessful Human Sacrifice. Essentially speaking, a jinchuuriki becomes a jinchuubai when the part of the seal holding the demon inside of the human holds while the part that keeps their minds apart fails. There's more to it than that, but I'll leave that for the story to tell.

If it wasn't clear why the head ninja from Kumo survived this time around, the idea is that being hit by the sudden, Kyuubi-like bloodlust disoriented him enough that Hiashi could take a little more time setting up his attack, since in canon (meaning in this case the anime, without contradiction from the manga) the Kumo-nin saw Hiashi coming.

Akamaru: 'Aka' means red, and 'maru' is a common masculine ending to names in Japan.

Eliminating hand seals: It seems pretty obvious—in the Orochimaru-Sandaime fight at the very least—that practicing a jutsu enough allowed ninja to reduce the number of hand seals used, eventually to the point that it can be done without seals. Now, the way that the Sharingan copies techniques is that they can replicate any jutsu they see /_so long as they are capable of doing so_/. If they copy jutsu when the user has eliminated hand seals, then they will only be able to replicate it if they are capable of using the jutsu without the hand seals that were eliminated; in other words, they wouldn't be able to copy it unless they were already able to use that jutsu without the omitted seals. That is how there could be Hidden techniques in a village full of Uchiha.

I decided to take this time in every chapter to recommend another fanfic. I will be hitting some of the more popular ones, but I'll also include some of the hidden gems that I've found.

The first recommended fanfic could only be from the author that provided the idea that sparked this fic: The Scorpion's Disciple, by _nobody102_. It's a very clever story about Sasori hiding in Konoha a couple of years before the start of the series and becoming a secret mentor to Naruto.


End file.
